Our team information can be found at the following link Facilities & Project Team

The installation of the temporary heating within the Main library will commence, this weekend, Saturday 27^th November 2021 and will be completed end of next week.

It will consist of electrical heaters being positioned in various office areas on the 1^st floor. In addition to that, on the 2^nd floor, there will be 24 external, heat pump, air conditioning systems, which will be fed through slightly opened windows to allow a connection with the external condensing unit. All works will be carried out, early morning, prior to the library opening, so there will be no disruption to staff and students.

If you have any issues or queries regarding this please contact the Library Facilities & Projects Team at lib-facilities@ucl.ac.uk

Facilities & Projects Team Blog – Our team information can be found at the following link Facilities & Projects Team

A temporary heating solution for the affected areas in the Main library, will be installed, by UCL Estates, as soon as possible.

There will be external gas units to cover the 1st & 2nd floors with temporary ducts through high level windows, which will disperse into those areas.

The 3rd floor will have stand alone, split units that will be installed through the windows. There will about 20 of those to enable adequate coverage for the space.

The installations will significantly improve the quality of warmth throughout the library for students and staff.
We’re just waiting for Estates to get costs finalised and the practicalities the install sorted out.

This will be an ongoing long term project with UCL Estates and we will continue to keep you updated on the progress.

Carry forward annual leave hours adjustments

The central HR team have now completed the one off task of transferring annual leave carry forward onto MyHR for all requests that were submitted to Library HR by the 15^th September.

Making manual carry forward annual leave adjustments using the MyHR Self-service function

If you missed the deadline or your carry forward annual leave hours are not showing on your record you may make adjustments via the self-service function on MyHR. Any adjustments made on the systems will require approval by your line manager.

Details of how to manually adjust your annual leave entitlement can be found via the UCL Knowledge Centre   under  ‘adjust your annual leave’ within the employee self service section on MyHR.

Processing Carry forward annual leave hours for subsequent years

For the next annual leave year and going forward any carry forward will be done automatically by MyHR (there will be no requirement to notify the Library HR team). The system will automatically apply the maximum carry forward limit.

Deadline for taking accrued carry forward annual leave hours

There will no longer be the requirement to take your carried-forward leave by January. This means staff can take their accrued annual leave hours throughout the leave year. The normal maximum carry forward allowance for each leave year will apply.

Annual leave entitlement queries

If you believe your annual leave entitlement is incorrect please contact HR Services  via hr-services@ucl.ac.uk

Work patterns

Staff can continue to use the self-service function on MyHR to change their work pattern with prior approval from their line manager where there is no change in their overall FTE. All submissions will need approval by the line manager via MyHR in order for the change to take effect.

Please note that you do not need to record whether you are working at home or in the office in MyHR and will only need to confirm the hours worked per day.

Instructions of how to amend your work pattern can be found via the UCL Knowledge Centre  under the employee service function entitled ‘Enter or Maintain your work pattern.’

The Student Centre team have been shortlisted in the Times Higher Education Awards under the “Outstanding Library Team” category. This is an amazing achievement and we want to celebrate it.

Image for email signature

Please can you attach this image to your email signatures. More information on how to do this is available on the ISD webpages.

(To save right click)

The image is also available for download from the THE Awards website.

Sharing the news on social Media

The Library comms team will co-ordinate sharing the news through the library’s social media accounts. If you wish to tweet about the shortlisting in a personal capacity on your own accounts, please do use the hashtag #THEAwards.

About the awards

The winners will be announced at a celebration event in central London on 25 November 2021. These are the 17th annual THE Awards, perhaps better known as the “Oscars of higher education”.

This year they focus primarily on activity during the 2019-20 academic year, and so include a large number of submissions based on the initial response of all HE institutions to the unique and wide-ranging challenges brought by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Our team information can be found at the following link Facilities & Project Team

Please see below an update with regards to work taking place this weekend:

Saturday 28^th August 2021 – The Science Library will be closed due to Sodexo carrying out a vital deep clean on all of the floor areas, in all communal spaces, in readiness for the new term in September.

The team have been working hard going from site to site getting social distancing in spaces rearranged and signage removed ready for new direction from UCL for the start of term.

If you have any issues or queries regarding this please contact the Library Facilities & Projects Team at lib-facilities@ucl.ac.uk

Facilities & Projects Team Blog – Our team information can be found at the following link Facilities & Project Team

Project update for the Fire Alarm upgrade installations throughout DMS Watson, Petrie Museum and Energy Centre.

Monday 28^th June 2021 – First floor will be fully open and contactors will be completing works in sections. They will be commencing work on the Mezzanine areas, up and down and in G15 Teaching Cluster. This whole area will be closed to staff and students. They will be sheeting and taping the areas off tight to the desks so the one way system can continue.

This work will take a couple of weeks to complete. Arrangements have been made so that work in all staff occupied services and areas as well as the entrance area, will be completed on Saturday mornings before opening and Sundays, so services are not too disrupted.

We will continue to provide further updates as the project progresses. Please speak to your building manager if you have any concerns or queries and they can feed back to the team.

We are delighted that The Global Smartphone: Beyond a youth technology (published on May 6th 2021) has hit the headlines across the world, with coverage in newspapers including The Sunday Times, The Guardian and Daily Mail.

Coverage in the UK and Ireland has included stories by The Scottish Herald, Reuters, The Irish Times, RTE, Newstalk, and an interview with lead author Prof Daniel Miller (UCL Anthropology) on Sky News this morning. Publications in Portugal (here, here, here and here), Germany, Brazil. Greece  (and here), Slovakia, Romania, Russia, Malaysia, Australia, Albania, Egypt, Russia, Italy, Israel, Czechia and France have also reported on the book’s findings.

The book documents the work of a team of 11 anthropologists who spent 16 months documenting smartphone use in nine countries across Africa, Asia, Europe and South America, with a particular focus on older adults. The team was led by Professor Daniel Miller, whose previous UCL Press series on global social media usage, Why We Post, saw more than a million downloads of the open access books that detailed the findings.

The Global Smartphone: Beyond a youth technology is written by Professor Daniel Miller (UCL Anthropology), Laila Abed Rabho, Patrick Awondo, Maya de Vries, Marília Duque, Pauline Garvey, Laura Haapio-Kirk, Charlotte Hawkins, Alfonso Otaegui, Shireen Walton, and Xinyuan Wang. It is part of the Ageing with Smartphones series, which also includes Ageing with Smartphones in Ireland and Ageing with Smartphones in Urban Italy.

Facilities & Projects Team Blog – Our team information can be found at the following link Facilities & Projects Team

Project update for the Fire Alarm upgrade installations throughout DMS Watson, Petrie Museum and Energy Centre.

The 3^rd Floor and 4^th Floor will be closed on Thursday 6^th May and Friday 7^th May 2021.

Monday 10^th May 2021 the 4^th Floor will reopen, while work on the 3rd floor will continue. This area will be closed off and there will be some noise disruption permeating through the building. Users of these spaces will need to be remined of additional bookable study spaces in other locations during this time.

We will continue to provide further updates as the project progresses. Please speak to your building manager if you have any concerns or queries and they can feed back to the team.

It’s been a long time coming and now its finally here! I am thrilled to announce the launch of the Library Services Aspiring Managers Programme 2021. A bespoke development opportunity created for Library Services staff, to support those looking to move into supervisory or management roles and progress their careers.

Aspiring Managers is a leadership development programme, open to all staff Grades 5 to 7, who have an active interest in progressing into a supervisory or people management role. The programme is spread over 6 months and offers a blended learning approach to training; combining live virtual sessions with subject experts, online training, self-learning and 121 mentorship.

This is the pilot cohort for this programme and will offer 10 places; requiring a commitment of 40 hours from the participant. The programme will also require 5 hours commitment from the line manager.

For further information, details of the programme structure, shortlisting criteria and session dates click here Aspiring Managers Programme Launch_Library Services_April2021

The application and nomination process is as follows:

• Interested staff to complete the application form: LibraryServices_AspiringManagers_Application Form_2021
• Line manager must nominate staff member by submitting their application form to aanchal.bhatt@ucl.ac.uk
• Deadline for submission: 17^th May 2021

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact aanchal.bhatt@ucl.ac.uk

It seems like another lifetime when we launched a pilot of Senior Management Team (SMT) surgeries (actually July 2019) via this blog https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/libnet/2019/07/11/launch-of-smt-surgeries/.  This was one of a range of measures we had discussed to address feedback from colleagues via the last Library Staff Survey and other channels that the SMT weren’t as visible as you would like and that it wasn’t always clear who we are and what our roles are. You can find out (along with a bit about what we each do) here https://www.ucl.ac.uk/libnet/about-us/committees-and-working-groups/senior-management-team.  You can access the minutes of regular SMT meetings from this link if you are interested.

While the number of staff who attended the pilot SMT surgeries was quite small, they were well received and we will continue to offer them on a monthly basis (alongside other channels of communication).  Dates have been scheduled until the end of the year.  We will hold them on Teams for the moment, and once ‘normal’ service is resumed they will be offered alternately online and f2f.  All members of the SMT have been timetabled to run these surgeries and the dates are below.  In addition we will be briefly attending team meetings over the next couple of months to talk about the surgeries and we will be in touch with managers of teams across the service to make sure this happens. Please email to book a slot.  We will send a monthly reminder email via Liblist.

• 28th April 2021 2 – 3 pm:  Rozz Evans, Karen Jeger, Andy Pow  (email rosalind.evans@ucl.ac.uk)
• 25th May 2021 12 – 1 pm: Peter Dennison, June Hedges, Martin Moyle (email p.dennison@ucl.ac.uk)
• 21st June 2021 3 – 4 pm:  Sarah Aitchison, Rozz Evans, Ben Meunier (email s.aitchison@ucl.ac.uk)
• 29th July 9.30 – 10.30 am: Paul Ayris, Kate Cheney, Andy Pow (email a.pow@ucl.ac.uk)
• 29^th September 2021 2 – 3 pm: Karen Jeger, Margaret Stone, Michelle Wake (email k.jeger@ucl.ac.uk)
• 25th October 2021 11 – 12 am: Jennifer Brown, Lara Speicher, Martin Moyle (email jennifer.brown@ucl.ac.uk)
• 23^rd November 2021 10 – 11 am: Anna Di Iorio, June Hedges, Ben Meunier (email j.hedges@ucl.ac.uk)

We will also be running an evening surgery if there is demand.  Please email rosalind.evans@ucl.ac.uk if this would be your preferred option and we will organise it.

People also expressed the desire for more opportunities to interact with us directly, formally and informally.

We have created a new online SMT Feedback form https://ucl-global.libwizard.com/f/smt-feedback.  You can choose to submit comments, questions and suggestions via this form.  If you give your name you will receive an email response although you can also choose to do so anonymously.  We will take all comments and suggestions seriously and regular updates will be shared regarding feedback received at the termly full meeting of the SMT and more widely as appropriate.

We’d also like to establish far more regular visits to teams and sites.

In order to find out what you would like from us we will begin by setting up meetings with groups of team managers to talk and share ideas about how to develop this.  We understand that while some may want to hear more about the area of responsibilities of particular SMT members or receive briefings on particular developments, others would welcome the opportunity to show what they have been doing within their sites and teams. Others would like something even less formal – maybe to invite a member of SMT to their team meetings or just for a coffee and chat?  In the meantime we are always pleased to be invited, so please free to email any of us individually or via our group email (lib-smt@ucl.ac.uk).

We are always interested in your ideas about this as one of the most important things about working for UCL Library Services is that no matter what our roles we are united in our wish to be the best we can be.  Please do make full use of the range of opportunities to help us improve in this area. However you do it, please do make sure you have your say!